There's not much story to speak of, but the semi-Iranian hipster feminist vampire romance A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is gorgeous to behold and up to its jugular vein in quirky/spooky atmosphere.. Girl Walks Home manages to be a wholly original work while containing nary a unique thought or idea.. The director uses time-honored techniques to keep you on edge, every one of which graced Hammer films of yore. But happily for the picture, there's a reason they're time-honored.. Haunted house mo...

This is a Tim Burton film with something to say. And that's a rare and precious thing.. "Life After Beth" gets into the well-tread zombie-comedy territory in a clever and inspired way. Then it doesn't get out of it nearly so skillfully.. The movie is DOA from scene one and is never resuscitated.. The most Tim Burton-y of the director's films, and not just because it contains a vast catalog of references to his own movies - everything from "Edward Scissorhands'' to the underrated 1989 "Batman.''....

The beauty of Let the Right One In resides in the way the horror remains grounded in a tragic kind of love.. Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's Spring is a clever and severely romantic creature feature that, not unlike its dim-witted bro hero, is in desperate need of a woman's touch.. John Ajvide Lindqvist's script (from his novel) nails adolescent pain perfectly and is realized by Tomas Alfredson's expert direction.. 30 Days of Night is the well-paced and entertaining horror debut of Hard Candy...

The film benefits from Burton's consistency of vision. Swooping camera work and a sense of really discomfiting fantasy do the groundwork. When characters break into song, it fits in the world Burton has built.. No one here gets out alive in Jim Jarmusch's cool new vampire romance .... It's easily Burton's best since, well, ever.. It's as if Burton was born to direct it.. This Sweeney Todd is all subtext and no substance. It starts off large and swaggering but doesn't know where to turn next: Bur...

Swinton, her hair white and long and her eyes tired and kind, and Hiddleston, moody and resigned, are wonderful - delivering their lines with the dry sighs of a desert breeze.. Even vampires get the blues.. The movie is steeped in a world-weariness that flatters a certain kind of know-it-all. Swinton and Hiddleston, looking like twins, take disaffection to the moon. Not since Weekend at Bernie's have two actors done more to promote the cause of corpses.. In "Only Lovers Left Alive," writer-direc...

As even [Del Toro's] last film, the kaiju monster movie Pacific Rim, proved, there may be no better conjurer of color in movies right now. His dreams, and nightmares, are in technicolor.. "Crimson Peak" is frustrating from nearly every angle. It lets the audience race ahead of the reveals, while struggling to put all that tantalizingly rich atmosphere to effective narrative use.. Guillermo del Toro's latest dive into the darkness is a sumptuous, beautifully constructed tale that feels both archa...

It's a smart, subversive tip of the hat to everything from American and Italian Westerns to horror movies, Jim Jarmusch, love stories, Iranian traditionalism and rock 'n' roll. Oh, and there's a vampire.. [T]here's something a bit sour about the whole enterprise, a lack of fun that becomes more evident as the injuries and indignities piled upon poor Needy accumulate, and gradually crowd out the film's early tongue-in-cheekiness.. In almost every decision the director makes, there is a calculated...